New 911 Lawsuit Filed

A legal magazine is reporting on the latest developments in the long-standing 911 civil lawsuits naming Saudi Arabia and Saudi princes and charities as defendants. According to the report:

September 8, 2011 6:50 PM The Global Lawyer: The Kingdom and the 9/11 Plaintiffs…In 2002 an unlikely coalition of victims, mostly represented by Motley Rice, and property insurers, mostly represented by Cozen O’Connor, sued Saudi Arabia and a clutch of Saudi princes and charities that allegedly funded al Qaeda. The suits were both praised and reviled as “the privatization of foreign policy.” Stephen Cozen, who offers the more cautious estimate of the two lead lawyers, puts the stakes as $150–250 billion, including interest and treble damages. The New York Times quoted Ronald Motley as saying: “I loooove to pick on the Saudis.” The King of Saudi Arabia most likely heaved a huge sigh of relief in June 2009, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review an August 2008 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissing the plaintiffs claims against the Kingdom, its princes, and the one prominent charity that was shrewd enough to claim sovereign immunity. But the plaintiffs, determined to hold private sponsors of terror accountable, refused to walk away. Cozen and his allies see four paths forward. First, on Thursday Cozen O’Connor filed a new 9/11 suit against the Kingdom, along with select princes and charities, in the name of a new plaintiff: an insurance syndicate that covered more than $215 million of the $1.2 billion settlement struck last year with airlines and airport security firms. (The Second Circuit approved the settlement in April.) The plaintiffs lawyers’ most interesting strategic choice was to file their 154-page complaint in the Western District of Pennsylvania, where the fourth hijacked jetliner crashed. If that choice sticks, it avoids both unfriendly Second Circuit law and a seemingly unfriendly judge, Manhattan federal district court judge George Daniels, who presides over the consolidated 9/11 funding litigation. Second, Cozen said that Sen. Charles Schumer will soon reintroduce a bill, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, that would effectively overrule the Second Circuit’s obstructive rulings on sovereign immunity and personal jurisdiction and allow a new action to be filed against Saudi Arabia. Cozen O’Connor’s lobbying materials make clear that its preferred endgame is to force Saudi Arabia into a massive executive agreement, on the model of Libya’s 2008 settlement of terror claims.

The report says that Steve Cozen, the attorney who filed the new suit, says that he will use various Saudi Arabian charities such as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) to “reach Saudi Arabia itself.”

Muslim Brothers were instrumental in the founding of WAMY and the organization continues to enjoy close relations with the global Muslim Brotherhood. U.S. government agencies and officials have argued that WAMY has helped spread Islamic extremism around the world as well as sponsoring terrorism in places such as Bosnia, Israel, and India. Numerous previous posts have discussed WAMY’s activities throughout the world. Previous posts have discussed the organizations apparent recent financial difficulties.